Some Like it Hot …But Probably Not This Hot: The Archaeology of a (BIG!) Fire

Twenty years ago, archaeologists digging at George Washington’s Ferry Farm unearthed the remains of a mid-eighteenth century kitchen. It was immediately obvious from the state of the artifacts that this kitchen had not simply fallen into to ruin and been abandoned – it had burned down. While this is fairly interesting in and of itself, a reexamination of the kitchen fire artifacts this year revealed surprising information about the intensity of the fire.

Overhead image of George Washington’s Ferry Farm showing location of the kitchen that burnt down in the 18th century. Credit: Google

What first struck us was the sheer density of artifacts in this kitchen. We recovered A LOT of artifacts. Furthermore, these broken sherds could be mended to form almost whole bottles, crocks, jugs, pans, and such. The number of artifacts and the fact they could be put together to form entire objects tell us that the Washington family and their slaves did not have much, if any, time to salvage what was inside the burning kitchen. Food, wine bottles, food storage and preparation vessels and utensils, furniture, and more all destroyed exactly where they stood. Think of this kitchen as a mini Pompeii or Titanic. Just about everything that the Washington’s had in their kitchen went down with the ship and was still there, just squished and burned.

A preserved moment in time like this fire is a great opportunity for archaeologists to study the Washingtons but it comes with one big problem—most of the artifacts were totally cooked and absolutely toasted beyond recognition in some cases. Soft metal artifacts made from lead and copper, for example, were reduced to melted blobs by the fire. Ceramic vessels appear to have exploded from the heat and were reduced to blackened sherds. Some of the glass bottles survived with a minimal amount of warping from heat but the majority were melted or even burned in a process called ‘devitrification’. And oddly enough there was very little animal bone, which is usually ubiquitous in kitchens found archaeologically.

To put the intensity of this kitchen fire in context here are some quick statistics (in Fahrenheit):

Lead melts at 621.4 degrees.

According to the National Institute of Fire and Safety Training, the average modern house fire tops out at around 1,100 degrees.

1,400-1,800 degrees is the temperature at which bone will be destroyed

Copper melts at 1,984 degrees

Glass melts between 2,600 and 2,800 degrees.

Since the Washington kitchen fire was hot enough to actually burn glass, not just melt it, we’re looking at a fire that likely exceeded 2,800 degrees. That’s incredible! It also explains why there was so little animal bone recovered. Most bone was probably completely destroyed by the flames.

Extremely burned tin glaze ceramic recovered from the kitchen site at Ferry Farm.

Devitrified glass from the burnt Washington kitchen

Melted copper alloy excavated from the Ferry Farm kitchen

Blobs of lead alloy recovered from the kitchen site

Slightly burned wine bottle from the kitchen

A second slightly burned wine bottle

So, how on earth did the fire get that hot? We’ll probably never know, unfortunately. Some possible explanations may be the environmental conditions at the time of the blaze – a hot dry day with high winds could produce a perfect storm for a wooden kitchen to turn into an inferno. The fire also may have started at night when few people were awake to notice and try to put it out, although presumably the kitchen housed enslaved people, as was common for that time period. Another culprit may have been what was kept in the kitchen. There were dozens of wine bottles in there. While we call them ‘wine’ bottles today, they were actually all-purpose vessels that held any kind of spirituous liquid including harder alcohol like gin, whiskey, and rum, which are highly combustible. Animal products such as lard, tallow, beeswax, and even whale oil for lamps were likely stored in the kitchen and all burn quite well for long periods of time.

Regardless of the fire’s cause, it is clear from archaeological evidence that it happened quickly because not much within the structure could be saved, if anything. We also know that it burned extremely hot and for a sustained period of time in order to have caused so much damage to the items within.

Finally, perhaps, the last and the biggest mystery is where the replacement kitchen was located. Kitchens were almost all outbuildings because, as you may have deduced, they tended to catch on fire easily. A colonial household absolutely required a kitchen, however, and another would have been built almost immediately. Somewhere on the landscape at Ferry Farm, there is another kitchen waiting to be discovered archaeologically.

In the meantime, The George Washington Foundation plans to reconstruct the original Washington era kitchen so visitors can experience the sights, sounds, and smells of an eighteenth century kitchen, minus the blazing inferno, of course.